


who you gonna call?

by betakids



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Ghost Hunters, M/M, Short & Sweet, TRUE. LOVE., hermanns gonna fight a fucking ghost, newt is a professional ghostbuster and he takes it DEAD serious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 08:27:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14209155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betakids/pseuds/betakids
Summary: He’s thought things out, first of all.There’s like, amethodto the madness.





	who you gonna call?

The Geiszler Clan is before anything else, science-minded.

That’s sort of what he likes to tell himself before he goes shooting a big laser gun around an old opera house while _praying_ he doesn’t hit a fire alarm. The only thing he needs more than a ghost-somehow-out-of-a-box is sprinklers going off, alerting the _absolutely lame_ owner of the theatre in question and preventing the ghost he’s chasing down from actually getting- you know, somehow inside his fucking carefully-designed ghost-holding box.

He’s thought things out, first of all.

There’s like, a _method_ to the madness.

The ghost, or maybe a poltergeist if there’s any difference, unhooks one of the huge, opulent, glittering Swarovski chandeliers swaying back and forth on the ceiling. It sends up a plume of dust from the crushed velvet seats below it and creates an almost pleasant sound when it shatters, sending stray crystal drops and shards spilling across the room looking like beads of condensation on a glass.

When he says science-minded, he means exactly that. His dad used to sweat through his ratty old wife beater in his garage with the door propped open by a broom handle, setting up machines that would whir and clank and come to life sandwiched in between the old cardboard boxes and sacks of driveway salt.

He’s used to certain things- parents with hair standing up and singed at the ends, glowing, spinning, humming amalgams of electricity and metal and sharp edges clanking around his household and augmenting the regular wiring of things- and constant, never ending disapproval by an assortment of peers and neighbors alike. He’s a kid who ping ponged all around the east coast, Connecticut to Rhode Island to Boston, with a brief stint in New Jersey and a full stop in Brooklyn. He’s had more technology littering the trail they left than memories.

He has to yelp and duck and roll over his shoulder under a cloth-covered dinner table. There’s still a crystal glass of some ambiguously fancy champagne resting on the top of it almost daintily, the kind expensive enough that it doesn’t even have a _label_ , just a delicate gold embossment across the front of it that he couldn’t recognize for the life of him. He almost wants to kick the side of the table to watch it fall and shatter out of spite, and only the abject fear of the ghost and knowledge he’s out of rounds until his gun powers up again keeps him from doing so.

Ghost hunting came naturally, not all this fancy shit. Ghost _busting_ , to be more accurate.

His parents were proud of him, actually. His mom had a serial killer den covered in newspaper clippings and red string on the paranormal that he inherited, and three filing cabinets worth of tech design that he expanded on and brought to life. His dad clapped him on the shoulder and told him to _go get em tiger, bring us home a ghoul_ and basically told him to fuck off. But nicely. He left them to their weed and romance and started a business.

He clicks a little frantically at the trigger on his gun- totally resistant to a whole assortment of ectoplasma and ectoacid and other ectosubstances he’s speculating about, by the way- watching the glowing blue bar fill up with charge. The way it blinks, slowly and precisely, seems to be mocking him. He almost cracks the goddamn thing over his knee, probably would if his arms weren’t shaking so hard.

Because he didn’t know ghosts could _do things_. He knows they can interact with inanimate objects, that’s a given, but he’s pretty sure this lady- opera singer murdered onstage after a jealous lover discovered her tryst in 1855, he almost wishes he were at the show- shot a bolt of something back at him. He’s really running out of time, too. He needs to do his, his-

His hands-on paranormal extermination. Moves and rhymes weren’t the only thing he busted. He also busted _ghosts_. Ghosts were the other thing he busted.

Funnily enough, the owner of the opera house didn’t find that little quip nearly as entertaining as he had when he was saying it. It’s whatever. He doesn’t need to be validated by a man who listens to like, orchestral music and opera that wasn’t even _rock_. He especially doesn’t need to be thinking about Hermann Gottlieb when he might die, that would be a completely pathetic way to go out.

Newt almost shudders. He truly pities the man, and everything he stands for. It’s sad, really. How life can turn out that way.

Powdered crystal grinds against the floor underneath the rubber of his converse.

The power bar on his gun _finally_ , blissfully, blessedly fills all the way up, and the blue bar turns green and winks at him cheerfully. Newt whoops loudly and his fist pump slams against the top of the table, but it hardly matters when he stands up and knocks the whole goddamn thing off his back. The champagne leaks into the stuffy embroidered carpet, split right down the smarmy embellishment. He smiles.

God, does he hate rich people. Maybe he’d be friends with the ghost in another life, one where he isn’t on a mission to trap her inside his little container. Maybe he’d have been the dude she got killed for sleeping with. Because her life has basically been swooping down and knocking the like, top hats and monocles off of whatever prissy bitches actually went to a _Night Of Classical Music, Germann Ballet, and a three-part Opera_. He’s assuming that’s what goes on in here. He’s assuming they’re all bespoke-suit-wearing, fancy cologne-smelling, green-socks-with-dress-pants _dicks_ like Hermann.

Goddamn stupid Hermann Gottlieb, who wouldn’t let Newt into his opera even though the man knew well enough it was haunted. Even if the man had complained himself, personally, to Newt about the ghost. Now he has to resort to this- Newt breaking and entering to do some renegade ghost hunting because someone was too busy counting his fucking ascots and french poetry anthologies to let him do his job. Like he didn’t have a real business he had to be focusing on. He takes his busting seriously. _Dead_ seriously (ha ha).

Sometimes Newt just wishes he weren’t such a hero.

He props the gun up on his arm and narrows his eyes into the sights. The little red dot is focused on the spectral form of the ghost, he can feel the reassuring hum of the thing leeching into his shoulder that he squares in preparation to fire, and is painfully, tantalizing close to completely wiping the ghost out-

Hermann Gottlieb slams open the big double doors and shouts something loud, disapproving, and accented. Newt flinches so hard he fires into the ceiling and sends plaster raining down on the both of them while the bolt of electric energy bounces off of a decades old carving, scorches it, sends it firing right back at Hermann. Who ducks. Of course.

The only thing more annoying to him than the gun going limp and charging up again is the man of the hour himself. He’s gonna put Gottlieb in a fucking box, is what he’s gonna do. Forget the ghosts.

Hermann looks about the same as he did when they spoke briefly- still wearing a shirt with the thing buttoned all the way to the top, still vaguely squirrely, still angular- but the sour expression Newt thought must be permanently affixed on his face is replaced by something _furious_.

“What are you _DOING_ ,” he begins, somehow ignoring the ghost right in front of his goddamn face, “in my _OPERA_ , Mr. Geiszler?”

Newt gestures weakly at the poltergeist next to him, who’s flickering in and out of the the visible spectrum. He props his gun up and hopes it obscures the destruction from Hermann’s sight. “It’s Doctor Geiszler, actually!”

The man blanches and flushes both at the same time, which makes for some interesting patches of color on the high points of his cheekbones. His sculpted cheekbones. Gottlieb pushes past him angrily, just grabbing his whole setup- his whole entire _weapon_ \- right out of hands as he does so.

“I can’t- I cannot _fathom_ what you think you’re _doing_!” Hermann raps the gun against his leg impatiently, like he’s expecting it to be fireable, “This is absurd. I’m AGHAST. You are, I can’t imagine what type of stupid antics you think you're getting up to. Destruction of property. Breaking and entering! I’m- I’m speechless. I’m stricken!”

Newt watches the sharp bones in the man’s wrists move as he fiddles with the knobs. “You can’t fire the gun yet.” he says, weakly.

“ _Yes_ , Geiszler.” Hermann’s voice is the driest, most cutting drawl Newt’s ever heard. It goes straight to his fucking _bones_. “I gathered that much from context.”

He makes a sharp whistle with his thumb and forefinger. Newt pauses. Thinks the guy looks oddly single minded and shrewd, focused, because he shifts his stance to one with firm legs and adjusts his grip on the gun so he’s grabbed a sharp edge and protected his knuckles with the flat bit of the metal.

Hermann punches the ghost in the goddamn face with the gun the second it swoops toward him. It goes down instantly. Newt has spank bank material for the next _decade_.

He- he can’t feel his jaw working. He sees the man sigh and throw the gun to the side, shake out his arm, even- shit- even flick his tongue out for a second to lick at a split knuckle. Newt’s mouth is parched. Hermann looks at him. “I bust ghosts now. I’ve decided. I’m on the team. Is there a team?”

Newt swallows hard. “There is now.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> pacrim twitter is @weedsbian!!!
> 
> listen to me i’ve thought too much about this au for a one shot i love two men ONLY


End file.
